Duke Nukem vs Ike Gordon Freeman vs Guybrush Threepwood 2007
Results Round One Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 Ulti's Analysis Obligatory "why the F do people keep nominating Guybrush?" Coming into this match, most people expected Gordon Freeman > Ike. There was also a lot of hullabaloo about Duke possibly sneaking into second place. Yes, people had faith in GFNW getting first place. "lol" I know Half-Life 2 and all, but still. Then the match pic came out and people started freaking out about the Greg House picture, plus Duke looked like a total badass. What was a match with an expected first place winner immediately became a debated match, and what followed was perhaps our best match of round 1. Guybrush sucked early and ended in last place he's Guybrush. Why do people keep nominating this idiot? But other than him, this was a cool match. In the first five minutes, we had 3 characters with 15 votes of one another. And the leader was.... Duke Nukem?! WTF?!?! And it would get even more hilarious. Next update, Gordon took a 50 vote lead on THE DUKE for second place. It wouldn't last more than 15 minutes though, as Duke would slowly but surely gain control of things overnight en route to one of the most surprising first place finishes ever. There was a lot of fluctuation with how big the first place lead was -- it ranged from 300 to 1000 and everywhere in between depending on when you checked -- but Duke was never really threatened once the morning vote hit. Gordon was also never really threatened by Ike for second place, but Ike was perhaps the star of the match even in losing. I'd like to think Fire Emblem deserves the credit for this, but we all know it was the Brawl announcement. Ike fell behind the pace by more than 100 votes 45 minutes in, never to come close to second place again. However, his trends in this match were totally nuts. First off, the guy was down by nearly 1000 headed into the morning vote, and cut that thing down to 700 in a flash before the brats went to school. Then the ASV hit, and he cut a 2100 vote lead all the way down to under 900 before ultimately losing by 1045. It's a shame these three weren't closer, because this wasn't far off from being a truly classic match. As is, we had three characters very close but 1 through 3 weren't that much in doubt once the morning vote hit. Unfortunately this meant nothing for the next round, since Sonic and Sub-Zero are total monsters. Stats and Analysis * Gordon underperformed by '-5.17%', the #16 most disappointing performance of 2007 this was one of the funniest matches of all time, and definitely the funniest in this contest. I mean, it featured Guybrush friggin' Threepwood, Mr. All Outta Gum, Some Guy Announced on a Website and The Biggest Joke in Contest History. I don't think anyone realized how hilarious this match was until the picture came out: looks up to match pic what the hell going into this match, conventional wisdom was that Freeman had first place locked up, not out of strength, but because the other guys in this fourpack were so bad. Duke had not been relevant in ten years and Ike just wasn't well-known enough yet to pull this off. Ike was overestimated by a lot of people (like all Nintendo characters, really), but most thought he had enough to place since he was the only Nintendo option up against two FPS guys. it wasn't that different than the Alucard/Ness match, where people thought Ness would place because he was the only Nintendo guy in a sea of PS1 characters. the opening five minutes of this match was great. all three guys (sorry, Guybrush, but you just don't matter in this match) had the lead at some point, and they were never separated by more than 25 votes from first to third. the first update showed a big Ike dropoff, Duke Nukem doing the same and Gordon gaining a full percent. Ike looked like a board creation, but otherwise it wasn't too unexpected. the next update went the exact opposite, though, as Ike was the one with the big spike while Gordon flopped. at 00:20, Ike took second place back from Duke while Gordon floundered some more. what a weird match. from there, Gordon's collapse was nothing short of hilarious. Gordon has flopped a half dozen times over the years, but this is definitely the funniest if you ask me. screw Tina whoever and Max Payne, watching him lose to a washed up FPS guy and bleeding votes to a Brawl website was just bad. Duke just slowly built up a lead on him while Ike couldn't keep up the pace. after about 40 minutes, he fell off. Duke built up a 500 vote lead on Gordon by morning, with Ike behind the two by a good thousand votes. Gordon won some updates in the morning, cutting Duke's lead by about 50 votes. but the big story was Ike, who was winning updates outright and crushing both guys with the Nintendo morning vote. the during-school time period put him out of the running, but what he did was still impressive. he ended up pulling 1300 votes off of Freeman's lead during the daytime. if he was a little bit closer, this could have been a three-way battle for the ages. instead, we had to settle for the most hilarious flop of the contest - Freeman trying to pull a comeback on Duke. Duke's lead was at 1000 votes by the time school let out, and Gordon had the slowest comeback you can imagine. he'd win hours by single-digit numbers of votes, he'd get a couple big update wins only to lose them a couple minutes later, and in the end he managed to come back about 200 votes. Gordon Freeman, losing to Nukem. ha. I'm of the opinion that Duke won because he was the most recognizable guy in a poll of four unknown weaklings. the results the next round kind of confirmed that, as Duke got killed by Freeman (who got killed by Sonic). this match was one that should never have happened due to how weak everyone was, but the result was pretty funny and made up for it. Interesting Facts *Ike's 28.76% is the largest percentage ever achieved by a character who finished in 3rd place, and is in fact larger than the smallest percentage ever achieved by a character who finished in *1st* place. **However, the 2009 Games Contest saw a higher percentage achieved by a 3rd-place finisher, when the original Legend of Zelda scored 28.97% in the contest quarterfinals. *This is the only match to feature both a double comeback (Ike against Gordon Freeman AND Duke Nukem) *and* a double drop (Duke Nukem against Gordon Freeman AND Ike)and have them both occur at the same time, although neither one was successful. 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